The Environment Ministry has confirmed that the three newly hatched crested ibis chicks in Niigata Prefecture, are in good condition even after the recent approach of a predatory crow.

Earlier this month, the chicks became the nation’s first crested ibises to be born in the wild for 36 years. They are now estimated to be about 20 to 25 centimeters long and to weigh about 150 to 300 grams, the ministry said.

The ministry confirmed the condition of the chicks through a camcorder.

The dancers are expected to dress as polar bears Saturday afternoon. The dance party will raise awareness of plans to start drilling this summer in the Arctic’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas, both home to polar bears.

Before It’s Too Late in the Arctic. Subhankar Banerjee, Climate Story Tellers: “What do Arctic drilling and drone killing have in common? They are both being decided by Barack Obama without public debate…. Obama got personally involved and fast-tracked Shell’s drilling permits. According to Foreign Policy magazine, ‘Barack Obama has become George W. Bush on steroids.’ The article makes this reference with regard to Obama’s drone killing, but perhaps a similar thing could be said about his Arctic drilling that we must condemn”: here.

Von Siebold sent, in the year 1829 alone, 540 Japanese fish of 255 species, mainly in alcohol bottles, also some as mounted skins, to the natural history museum in Leiden. He also sent pictures of the fish, made by Japanese artist Kawahara Keiga (maybe some were by Keiga’s pupils).

Now, there is an exhibition of those fish and those pictures in the Sieboldhuis.

‘Fish: From Shark to Koi’ is a family exhibition. It shows visitors how Siebold collected ‘his’ fish in Japan between 1823 and 1829. The exhibition explains how the collected fish were painted, described, preserved and finally shipped to the Netherlands. Visitors, young and old, will learn how these fish were recognized as new species in the Netherlands and how they were described and illustrated as such in the Fauna Japonica: the fundamental bookwork on the Japanese animal kingdom.

The fish in this exhibition have rarely been shown to the public since the collection was formed. Most of the vivid water colour paintings by Kawahara Keiga are shown to the public for the first time in history. Because of their photo sensitivity, these works will not be included in any future exhibition any time soon. Highlights of this exhibition are the water colour paintings, the two meter long [blue] shark and the large sunfish, which is almost five feet long. In addition, the exhibition includes several aquariums with live fish.

Goldfish was the only Japanese fish species mentioned by famous eighteenth century naturalist Linnaeus. So Von Siebold really increased knowledge about fish in Japan. Today, more zoologists in Japan study fish than other animal species. Even the emperor studies fish. Fish are traditionally important in Japan, surrounded by sea on all sides and with many lakes and rivers in the interior.

There were also several films. One was about a new luminous shark species, recently discovered near Japan. Others were about tuna; about catfish (there is a legend that a giant catfish living under the Japanese islands causes earthquakes in Japan); and about koi.

Koi carp are big business in Japan. They may sell from 10,000 to 100,000 US dollars. There are beauty contests for them. Koi are thought of as symbols of peace, as they don’t fight among themselves.

Among the fish, exhibited both themselves and as pictures by Kawahara Keiga, was Ariosoma anagoides, a conger eel species. One could see that the mounted fish had lost their original colours. This is why Von Siebold commissioned Keiga to depict the fish, to preserve their colours.

In his Annual Report published last Tuesday, the Bank of Greece governor Yiorghos Provopoulos spelled out clearly what is demanded by the European Commission (EC) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) overlords from the government that will be formed following the general election of Sunday May 6th.

Provopoulos’ Annual Report is an out-and-out political manifesto that dictates to the bourgeois parties the tasks ahead and what they must do.

His main points are that the EC-IMF Bailout Agreements imposed on Greece in early March must be implemented at all costs, otherwise ‘the country will fall on the most adverse conditions’.

Therefore, Provopoulos says, ‘the political forces must agree on what unites them, that is the continuation of the state’, meaning the capitalist state.

This is a capitalist state which early in March declared bankruptcy through the so-called ‘haircut’ of the Greek State Bonds. The Greek debt is now estimated by the Greek Statistics Authority (GSA) at 355.6 billion Euros, 165.3 per cent of the GNP while last year the deficit reached 9.1 per cent.

Now the European Investment Bank demanded that a ‘drachma clause’ should be included in the 70m euro loan asked for by the DEH (State Electricity Corporation).

The ‘Commissioner’ of the EC-IMF overlords in Greece, Horst Reichenbach, demanded that DEH should sell four of its coal power stations and all the coal mines, while converting other power stations to natural gas, which is imported to Greece.

On the economy, the Bank of Greece governor states that recession, the collapse in the economy, will reach five per cent this year with a further increase in unemployment.

Just a week ago the GSA announced a staggering 46.6 per cent increase in unemployment last year as compared to 2010. In January 2011, unemployment stood at 14.8 per cent whereas in January of this year it reached 21.8 per cent. GSA say that 1,084,668 people were out of work last January but the Labour Institute of the GSEE (Greek TUC) estimates that over 1.5m workers are unemployed. Youth unemployment, according to GSA, has reached 50.8 per cent.

Provopoulos repeats the diktats for huge further cuts of 15-20 per cent in the wages of Greek workers made this week by both the IMF’s managing director Christine Lagarde and by José Angel Gurria, the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Armed with a law which writes off national collective agreements, the employers are imposing so-called ‘personal contracts’ (mainly in small businesses) or ‘business contracts’ (in manufacturing and large industries).

According to the state Labour Inspection Board, those who signed ‘personal contracts’ had their wages cut by 22 to 50 per cent, while those who signed ‘business contracts’ had their wages reduced by 22.35 to 40 per cent.

Throughout this critical period the GSEE (Greek TUC), the ADEDY (public sector trade unions federation) as well as the leaders of the large and powerful trade unions (mines, electricity, ports, engineering, construction, energy) have remained completely silent and inactive.

The only action by the GSEE bureaucrats was to take the government to the High Court claiming that the abolition of collective agreements was illegal.

The Elefsis Shipyards workers, just 20 km away from the Athens city centre, are now on strike since the management ordered a one-day working week! Across the city of Elefsis, workers in the Hellenic Steel plant are continuing their strike, now in its 180th day, against ‘flexible’ working conditions, wage cuts and mass sackings.

So are workers in hospitals, who carried out demonstrations last week, public transport workers, shop assistants and clothing workers.

Faced with annihilation at the election, both the New Democracy Party (conservatives) headed by Antonis Samaras and the PASOK party (social-democrats) led by former Finance Minister Vagelis Venizelos, the two main bourgeois parties up to now, are issuing threatening calls that unless they form a government, anarchy will reign in the country and no wages or pensions will be paid at all.

The leader of the conservatives, Samaras, called for just a 15 per cent corporation and business tax and announced that his government would privatise immediately all public urban transport and railways. On his part the PASOK leader Venizelos claims that it was due to his efforts that ‘Greece was saved’.

The IMF’s director Lagarde has repeatedly called for a post-election coalition government of the two main parties. Lagarde has even hinted that the re-appointment of the banker Lucas Papademos as Prime Minister would be appropriate.

The problem is that opinion polls carried by all the capitalist press predict just 20 per cent for the conservatives and 15 per cent for the social-democrats. That is not enough for the two of them to form a coalition government despite the Greek Electoral System that provides the top party at the polls with 50 seats in the 300-seat Vouli (parliament).

As the economic crisis hits the eurozone harder and harder, the political crisis in Greece and in other European countries becomes critical and will burst out.

THE number of unemployed people in Spain reached 5,639,500 at the end of March, with the unemployment rate hitting 24.4%, with youth unemployment at over 50%, the Spanish national statistics agency has reported: here.

Since the near-default of Greece threatened to set off a meltdown late last year, the eye of the financial storm has shifted to Spain: here.

Tens of thousands marched across rain-drenched Spain on Sunday against fresh cuts and tax rises days after official figures showed nearly one in four Spaniards are now jobless: here.

Austerity policies are driving us towards a double-dip recession, warns US economist Joseph Stiglitz. He sat down with Martin Eiermann to discuss new economic thinking and the influence of money in politics: here.

Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: “So, the euro crisis is risk on again. And this time it’s centered on Spain – which in a way is a good thing, because now the essential craziness of the orthodox German-inspired diagnosis of the crisis is on full display. For this is really, really not about fiscal irresponsibility…. I’m really starting to think that we’re heading for a crack-up of the whole system”: here.

The purpose of a banking union is to increase European financial institutions’ access to public treasuries: here.

For years, the Oostvlietpolder was threatened by loony local government plans to make it an industrial estate. While many existing industrial estates are half empty because of the economic crisis.

For years, the people living around the Oostvlietpolder meadows have fought those government plans. They have won.

Now, the Leiden Stadskrant of 27 April reports that the area will not become an industrial estate, but a nature reserve. It will be managed by the regional environmental organization Zuid-Hollands Landschap.

As it is still nesting season in the Oostvlietpolder now, work there will not start immediately. But after the breeding season, the area will be made more fit for nature and nature lovers. The Oostvlietpolder will then become a link between existing natural beauty areas Cronesteijn and Vlietlanden.

Osama Muhanna al-Tamimi says at least 30 bullets were fired early Saturday at his gym in Sanad, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of the capital Manama. He says no one was in the gym at the time and there were no injuries.

April 2012. Shark fin soup is seen as a luxury and prestigious dish and is often served at weddings and banquets. Although it has no taste, it is desired for its texture – somewhat sinewy apparently. Shark fin soup was much prized by Chinese emperors, but as there were so few of these, it never threatened shark populations until many many more people became able to afford it.

Unfortunately nowadays, many millions of people now eat the soup and consequently, sharks are being killed at a completely unsustainable rate. Whilst some foolish people may think – So what, who needs sharks? The answer is we all do. The almost complete disappearance of large sharks from the Eastern seaboard of the USA has led to a collapse of the once prolific and profitable scallop industry. Why? The absence of large sharks has seen numbers of rays, especially cow-nose rays, increase rapidly, and what do they eat? Scallops. (Now there are so few scallops, indications are that they will turn to clams and oysters.).

Similar effects have been shown to destroy coral reefs (fish that eat coral abound without shark predation) and sea grass beds (Dugong eat a lot more when there are no sharks about), and some key fish stocks are depleted when seal numbers increase. Thus the effects are widespread, and often unforeseen. Canada is often pilloried for killing seals, which they do partly to protect fish stocks – Yet if there were more sharks about this may well not be necessary.

Shark decline unsustainable

At these current rates, many large sharks may become extinct in many of the areas that they used to be found in in a few years’ time. The trouble is that if this happens, as can be seen from the current butchery of rhinos and elephants, the price for shark fin will go up and so the few that there are will be even more persecuted.

According to Oceana.org – Scientists estimate that fishing has reduced large predatory fish populations worldwide by 90 percent over the past 50 to 100 years.

Dr. Julia Baum and colleagues studied US fisheries data, focusing on swordfish and tuna as these fisheries often kills sharks too. They studied more than 200,000 longlines records from Northwest Atlantic Ocean between 1986 and 2000, when fishing vessels recorded the number of sharks of various species caught. From this data they worked out how many sharks were caught, and what the trends were in shark catch.

Worldwide, shark populations are in decline due to unregulated fishing, much of it to meet the high demand for fins. Up to 73 million sharks are killed annually primarily for their fins, which are used as an ingredient in shark fin soup, a popular dish in many East Asian countries. In fact this number is likely to be more than 100 million as recording is so difficult, and is actively hidden in many fisheries.

So here is the thing – Demand for shark fins will drive sharks to extinction – And it will have the following consequences :-

Important fisheries will close down
Coral reefs will die
Some species will become much more numerous, others will disappear, and many marine habitats and will be altered – With unknown consequences.

If you continue to demand and eat Shark fins, you are risking untold and unknown damage to the planet – You must be really really stupid.

Bruce Wright, a senior scientist at the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association, wrote an article for the Alaska Dispatch newspaper that proposed an interesting idea: “For years, legendary tales from Scotland and Western Alaska described large animals or monsters thought to live in Loch Ness and Lake Iliamna. But evidence has been mounting that the Loch Ness and Lake Iliamna monsters may, in fact, be sleeper sharks”: here.

CI recently accompanied a community patrol in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, that uncovered and stopped the slaughter of sharks, manta rays and sea cucumbers — in a protected area where fishing of any kind is illegal. To learn more, read a blog post by CI’s Bram Goram, who was there for the showdown: here.